The Life and Times of Justin Law
by soul-dwelling
Summary: A work in progress-what should become a collection of short stories documenting the childhood through young adulthood of the defected Death Scythe.
1. Lost and Found

"I need to quit smoking."

Tezca Tlipoca had produced a small mirror atop his left forearm. He was seated on the forest's floor, his dark pants getting coated with the soil, leaves, and whatever else was underneath him. He had even set his wolf mask onto the ground, propping up his left arm onto it to get a better angle. He was struggling to align the mirror with the cackling sun above him-which was damn near impossible because of all the trees in the way.

Pain in the ass running out of matches, now being reduced to this.

His last cigarette was set atop a rock in this Ukrainian forest. He had spent the last 20 minutes trying to angle the Sun's reflection just right, hoping some magnified light off his Demon Mirror would light his cigarette.

"After this one, I'm done smoking," Tezca said to himself. "Nicotine addiction, coughing, hacking. That stuff will kill me. Or eat up more of my budget."

As Tezca complained, he noticed the forest floor brightening. The clouds were dissipating.

He inhaled. "Alright," he muttered. He slowly increased the reflective power of his mirror, and sure enough, the sunlight was no longer only reflecting off his mirror but concentrated into a beam. It was a weak beam, but it was narrow enough that it should-

"Yes!" Tezca said quietly to himself as the cigarette caught aflame from the beam. He smiled as the Demon Mirror dissolved back into his left forearm. He reached out for the cigarette with his right hand.

And something leapt in front of him-and as it scurried, extinguished the small flame on his cigarette.

Tezca's mouth hanged open, and his eyes glazed over. Then he knitted his brow. "Freaking squirrels!" he screamed.

Then his eyes widened as he instinctively covered his mouth. "Right," he said to himself as he relaxed his eyes. "Be quiet. I'm supposed to be trailing him. But still-I oughta skin one of those pesky squirrels and make a new outfit out of them!"

And in his annoyance, Tezca then felt something within his very soul.

"Ah," he said to himself. He scrambled to his feet then bent down to pick up his wolf mask. He carried the mask with him as he ran in the direction of his target, struggling to drop the mask over his head.

"I found you, buddy," Tezca said to himself-or, rather, to his friend.

He then felt the mask his the top of his head and bounce a bit off his shoulders before settling in place.

"I'm coming for you, Justin."

Tezca sprinted, ignoring the branches knocking into his arms as he tried to make his legs move more quickly to where he could sense the defected Death Scythe's soul.

"And you're coming home."

As he ran, he forgot about the cigarette-his last cigarette-that he left behind.

* * *

 _ **This short chapter is for Day 1 of Justin Law Week on Tumblr. While it is currently the first chapter, I may move it to later, depending on when and how I finish the other chapters I'm writing.**_


	2. Alive

_**When Justin Law was six, and Tezca Tlipoca was a teen, the two were stuck on a mission that went badly. After defeating an enemy, Tezca takes her possession as a keepsake to give to Justin.**_

"Justin!"

He felt more branches tearing into his bare arms, tearing up his skin, probably getting wet leaves on his new shirt-

"Focus," he thought to himself. "Don't let anything distract you."

Then he tripped on a root. As Tezca Tlipoca slammed chest first onto the ground, he felt what was atop his head bounce off and along the Brazilian forest floor.

"Damn it!" he grunted. He had to hurry. He pressed his hands down into the dirt-and upon feeling his pain receptors firing realized he had scuffed the palms of his hands during his fall-and tried to ignore the pain. As he dashed, he knelt down to pick up the object that fell off the top of his head: a headband with bear ears atop it.

15-year-old Tezca had wanted to get out of Death City for a bit, to go on an actual mission. Granted, he still lacked a meister. But why not join his classmates? How else was he going to find a partner if he couldn't go out into the field and show what he was made of?

Unfortunately, he chastised himself, what he was made of was weakness. How could he let some dumbass poacher who couldn't even tie her shoelaces knock him out and kidnap his classmate?

His lungs were burning. He stopped and doubled over, trying to catch his breath. He felt his eyes stinging, whether from the sweat falling from his forehead or his own emotions overwhelming.

"Justin!" he hoarsely called, barely above a whisper.

At that moment, he felt his knees buckle. He could not afford to collapse, not while that bastard had run off with his classmate. But the willpower of even a weapon was still only human. Tezca tried not to, but finally his weakness won out, and he fell to his knees.

And he just missed getting a bullet through his brain.

The round instead lodged into a tree trunk a few yards from him, shattering some bark. Hearing the sound of the bullet fired, Tezca instinctively slammed his body to the floor-his new shirt now completely covered in mud-and laid his arms to his sides.

Just his dumb luck: he loses all energy, and he fell down so quickly that he inadvertently dodged what should have been the poacher's headshot.

"Fuck!" the poacher cursed herself. After knocking out Tezca, she had hoped to run off with her hostage back to the rendezvous point, where her team had rounded up the rest of these DWMA interlopers. She had the kid with her, unconscious and draped over her knee, as she had dragged herself and the brat into a tree. The leaves had provided cover for her (not that Tezca had noticed: he had a laser focus on finding Justin that he would not have noticed the poacher above him even if the trees were barren), and the height above would allow her to take a shot. She knocked herself for not accounting for a demon weapon having (or what she assumed had) sensitive hearing the shot as soon as she fired.

The poacher readied her weapon to fire another shot, pushing the cassette player and headphones off her lap-a keepsake she had a habit of bringing with her on her more fun trips-and next to the brat, so neither it nor him would not get in the way.

But as she looked through her scope, she could no longer see her target.

"Hey, there."

She recognized the voice. She didn't need to turn to see Tezca's furious face. Instead, she dropped her rifle, letting it fall to the floor, and attempted to pull her gun from her hip holster. But she would not have seen Tezca's face anyway: he had already transformed it into a very large mirror, which magnified the little sunshine peeking through the forest's leaves into a very bright light that blinded the poacher. That was all the opportunity Tezca needed: he clutched the child-Justin Law-to hold him tight for protection but also as an anchor so that, with one kick, he knocked the poacher out of the tree and down to the ground.

Tezca waited until he heard the body slam onto the ground before he reverted the mirror between his shoulder back into his usual head and let out his breath. "Thank God," he groaned as he leaned back in the tree-and upon feeling no backing let go of Justin and started flailing his arms to keep balance. Thank goodness as well that five-year-old Justin, still unconscious, was heavy enough at his young age to hold Tezca down on the branch to prevent his own fall.

Tezca gritted his teeth and righted himself. He tried to calm himself before he started hyperventilating again. He didn't know what to do with his hands-his palms still bleeding-so he was surprised to feel his finger touching something smooth. He looked down: his bloody hands were coating Justin's blonde hair.

"Damn it!" he complained, quickly moving his hands-and almost falling back again out of the tree. Re-righting himself, he frowned. "How stupid of me." He began to study Justin's head: he hadn't spread much blood through Justin's hair, or, rather, he could not tell which blood was from his hands and which was from the nasty bump that poacher gave to the child.

"Damn it all," Tezca growled. "That fucking bastard."

Tezca transformed his left hand into a mirror and set it under Justin's nose and mouth. It fogged up.

"Good," Tezca said to his unconscious classmate. "You're still breathing. Hopefully be up and ready to go in a bit to save the others."

It took Tezca a few minutes to drape the unconscious child across his back, holding his tiny legs under his armpits and pulling his tiny arms around his neck to hold on as he would shimmy them both down the tree. But before they descend the tree, Tezca noticed the object in Justin's lap.

"A cassette player?" He tugged on the headphones to study them: big, bulky, and grimy. "Cheap poacher can't be bothered with a decent CD player?"

After getting Justin in place, Tezca could not resist looking over the branch down to the floor, to make sure the poacher had not escaped. She hadn't: if she wasn't dead from the fall, it certainly knocked her out.

"Hey, asshole?!" Tezca called to the poacher. "I'm taking back my friend! And I'm stealing your shitty cassette player and your big-ass headphones, too!"

For Tezca, it felt like it took him twice as long to get down the tree as it had to secure Justin around him for the descent. But they got down to terra firma again.

"God, you're heavy," Tezca whined as he gently planted Justin down next to the tree. While his legs felt exhausted, Tezca dragged them to the poacher's spot, as he glanced for what she was carrying. He then noticed the metal shining among all the leaves and mud. He walked to that spot and picked up her gun. He couldn't see her rifle anywhere, but carrying that would be too much a hindrance. Instead, he went back to the poacher and gathered up as much strength as he could to lift her unconscious-no, dead, definitely dead-body to remove her holster. He wrapped it around him, put the gun in, and walked back to Justin.

Next to the boy was the crappy cassette player and the big-ass headphones. Tezca bit his lip. "Well, a promise is a promise." He nestled the cassette player into Justin's shorts pocket and put the headphones around his neck.

"Come on, Justin," he said, as he lifted him up, again positioning his tiny legs and tiny arms so he could carry him. "Let's find where Pushka and the others are."

Tezca still didn't know where he was going to find his teacher and classmates. But at least he found Justin, alive.

 _ **Written as part of the theme, "Alive," for Day 2 of Justin Law Week on Tumblr.**_

 ** _My headcanon is that Tezca did not start with wearing a bear head. He started small with just a headband with bear ears on it._**

 ** _And that's how Justin got his first headphones._**


	3. Judgment

_**Trigger warning: there will be gore. Poorly written, unimaginative gore.**_

* * *

12-year-old Justin Law was happy to be only back-up on this mission. As he leapt and skipped across Parisian rooftops, keeping an eye on their target-arsonist Jean Dark-he looked forward to the opportunity this evening's mission gave him to practice his technique. He even came up with a new phrase he could say as soon as he caught the bad guy!

But mostly, Justin was happy because he would not have to listen to a lot of arguing from Team A. Even though he would put in his earbuds and turn up his volume, it felt like he still could hear every syllable of whiny bickering between those two. Yards away from him on his left, he could spot Jean's location. She had already tossed most dead weight, mostly fireworks, to accelerate her getaway. Looking ahead, he saw he had sufficient length ahead of him on this rooftop to look back to see how far behind his DWMA classmates were. And as he did, his heart sank: those two were still way too far behind to catch up with Jean.

Then, even through the loud earbuds pumping tunes into his brain, Justin still could hear the shot fired from his classmate-and seeing Jean still running ahead, knew the shot missed.

"What are those two arguing about now?" he complained.

"Aim for the head."

"I'm doing it."

Another shot missed.

"Aim for the head!"

"Who's the meister here?!" 18-year-old Ayama Okami yelled at her weapon, Azusa Yumi. Ayama was so busy arguing with her partner that she only just then noticed the edge of the building that she was reaching. They were already three stories up, and she didn't plan on becoming street pizza-or whatever would be the most appropriate comparison while in France. Crepe maybe? Ayama shook her head: forget that-their target had already leapt across the alley to the next rooftop, and she was bickering with Yumi again.

"You got the Thousand-Mile Stare!" Might as well bicker a bit longer; their target wasn't that far away. "Why don't you use your eyes to spot the target so I can get some better aim?!"

"Why are you so agitated tonight?" Azusa voice escaped from the combination crossbow/sniper rifle. Ayama could tell she was trying to keep her voice even; that she could keep her calm more easily than her only pissed her off more.

"Whatever," Ayama complained, as she began to move a few steps back. "Just hang on!"

Ayama then dashed and, before reaching the edge of the rooftop, leapt. At least she had this to look forward to with this mission in Paris: the jumps here were phenomenal. She felt gravity stop for just that brief moment at the apex before she felt her ponytail go up, as if pulled by a string from the heavens, as she made her descent. She landed on the other rooftop, clearing the alley with sufficient clearance. She clutched her weapon horizontal with the ground, then rolled her legs up to her chest to cushion Azusa against the tuck-and-roll she then used to slow her forward propulsion. Once she knew she was rolling back to her feet, Ayama extended out her right leg to let the propulsion stand her upright again, then pushed out her left leg, and continued the spring to follow Ayama.

"You could have stuck that landing better."

"Shut up, Yumi!" Ayama screamed.

"Fire!" Azusa called.

"Not until I can aim!" Ayama said, looking down at her weapon instead of in front of her.

"No! Fire!"

Ayama looked up. "Shit!" she cried. Ahead of her was a trail of lighter fluid, leaked by Jean in her run ahead of the meister, and once finishing the container, had struck a match and left it to follow back towards Ayama's location. Ayama stopped herself in time before the flames got nearer.

"Now we have to put out this fire?!" Ayama screamed.

"Ayama," Azusa said. "The firefighters have been following us as well."

Ayama blinked.

"Remember?"

Ayama blushed and rubbed her neck. "I knew that."

"No, you didn't."

Ayama frowned. She took Azusa into both of her hands and marched to the side of the building. "Hey! Firefighters! I'm gonna drop this smart-ass weapon down to you!"

Ayama could feel the weapon shudder in her hands.

"Don't bother with a trampoline or nothing! Just let the nice, hard concrete break her fall and shatter her into a thousand pieces!"

"Not funny, Ayama!" Azusa screamed.

Ayama allowed herself a small smile. "No point running after Jean now." She turned back to spot where the arsonist now was. "After all, she doesn't know Justin is after him. Why not use your Thousand-Mile Eyes to let me take a gander at how he handles this bitch?"

Azusa groaned. "Fine. Just-just pull me away from the edge of this building, okay?!"

"As you wish," Ayama said with a coy smile. Seeing the firefighters climbing the ladder up to the rooftop to douse the flames, Ayama stepped away from that edge and towards where Jean was heading. Once she got a good spot to view this bout, she shut her eyes. After a moment, she felt something cool touch her chest-actually, her very soul. Knowing that she had achieved a decent Soul Resonance with her stuck-up partner, Ayama opened her eyes. Now her vision had changed dramatically: it felt like she had been dragged a mile forward right to where Jean Dark was running, as if she was right behind her.

"Cool view," Ayama said.

"You're welcome," Azusa answered.

"Now if I could only hear this epic brawl we're about to see."

"Can't you just be satisfied with what I offer you?"

As the firefighters were putting out the small blaze behind her, Ayama, her face glowing orange from the flames, smirked. "Nope."

* * *

Jean Dark smiled widely. Let her feet scream from feeling tired from this running. Let her shoulder still feel numb even after she tossed her supplies away to get away from those DWMA punks. None of that mattered because she had completed the job: the evidence for her client's case went up in smoke. That was enough pay to cover her for a long time. And enough other cases went up in smoke, too-that was enough to get her hired for the rest of her life.

"You die now!" she heard, accompanied by a white flash that lit up the night sky.

"The hell was that?" Jean said to herself.

She then noticed something cold, something smooth, sliding along her left arm, with a loud whoosh past her ear, blowing wind across that side of her body.

In that instance, it felt like every synapse in her brain was firing at once, a burning pain coursing through her. It felt like her left arm had caught fire. She looked to her left to find what had happened to her arm.

And she saw it. The arm itself looked fine: no burns, no gouges, no twitching. It was absolutely fine.

Except for the fact that it was lying in her blood, severed at her shoulder.

It was almost comical for Jean, how long it took her to realize what had happened. Jean Dark did not scream. She did not cry. She was too distracted by this absurd sight-her arm had been sliced clean off at her shoulder-and it was lying next to some 12-year-old blonde kid. And his appearance was even more comical: despite being a child, he was towering over her, because he had transformed his torso. There was just empty space where his abdomen and back had been. His arms were gone, replaced with two pillars that rose his shoulders, neck, and head to a great height. At the bottom of this gap where his torso used to be was a sharp metal blade, coated with blood-her blood-along it. And his tiny legs jutting out from what had been the base of this grotesque guillotine/human mash-up.

"Oh, darn," Justin Law chastised himself. "I misaimed." He looked at his target. "Sorry!" he shouted down at his target, due to his distance from her but also the loud music he was still listening to.

Jean recoiled in shock-now starting to feel pain in her arm. This brat? This brat is some weapon who just managed to slice off her fucking arm?!

"I had meant for your execution to be swift! I didn't want you to suffer for long! My most sincerest apologies for my amateur assassin! Please bear with me! I am new at this-"

"The fuck?!"

Now Jean Dark felt the pain, as well as the fury.

"My arm! You sliced off my fuck-"

Now it was Justin's turn to recoil. Shocked at the exclamation, his body glowed, reverting him to his human form-upon which he promptly landed with a thud on his backside. "Ouch," he muttered, rubbing there with his newly returned right arm.

But Justin was back on his feet almost instantly-and then lifted off his feet-as Jean with her remaining arm lifted him by the collar of his black T-shirt and held him over the edge of the roof. "You fucking sliced off my arm!" Jean screamed.

Feeling the weight of even this tiny boy to be too much for her, Jean allowed gravity to do the work for her, letting go of Justin to let him fall to the street. She turned away-not because she did not want to see the child die, but because now she was going to be much slower escaping with one arm. She glanced at her left arm, lying in its blood. "Fuck it," she groaned. She pulled the long bandana off the top of her head, wrapped it repeatedly around the new stump, and held the end of the bandana with her teeth long enough in an attempt to stop the bleeding.

Jean then took her first step down the fire escape at the edge of the roof. She was not going to get far in this condition, but maybe she could get far enough to the safehouse. Once there, her employer would provide the medical attention she needed.

It was a long descent, longer still from depending on one arm to steady her new sense of unbalance. But she got to the street again. She could begin her march forward.

Then she felt her body fall forward. Her chin slammed into the asphalt of the street, knocking her bottom teeth into her top. She cried in pain, struggling to turn off her stomach to get up. She was stopped, however, by that which had tripped her: a ring, like that of a guillotine's collar, clutching her right ankle.

"Hear me, O Lord!"

Jean pushed her remaining arm up to look over her shoulder. It was that kid again! His right arm had been transformed into a collar that was wrapped around her ankle!

"The hell?" she muttered. His loud call actually made her stop struggling to remove his collar from her ankle.

Justin continued: "Make me a servant of thy holy-!"

He stopped because Jean's boot had crashed into his nose.

"Get off!" Jean shouted at the child, repeatedly kicking her foot into his face.

"Make me a servant of-"

She kicked again.

"Make me a serv-"

She kicked again.

"Would you let me finish?!" Justin cried.

One more kick managed to knock the boy off her leg, releasing the collar from her ankle. Justin's tiny body rolled along the sidewalk until it was stopped by a lamppost.

After removing the brat from her, Jean was lying on her side, atop her remaining arm. With one hassle off her back, she now could focus on the pain shooting through where her other arm used to be. "Fuck!' she cried. She turned her body so that her abdomen rested on the street. With her right arm and her left knee, she pushed her body up from the floor.

She slammed her steel-toed boot into Justin's abdomen. The boy grunted. His arms felt like Jell-O; he tried to wrap them around Jean's leg, to keep her occupied just a bit longer, but his grip dissolved with each kick.

"What the hell was all that garbage you were spouting?" she asked, interrupting herself every third or fourth word to kick the child again.

"J-judgment," Justin said after the last of the kicks. She had stopped for a moment, which gave Justin the time he needed to raise his left arm to transform it back into a collar-but he could not: the pain was too much, and his arm fell limp on the sidewalk.

He needed a distraction. He'd have to monologue her a bit more. "Under the authority given to me by our Lord."

Such authority got his hand stamped by Jean's heel, which she proceeded to grind. Justin yelped, then he screamed more loudly.

"Yes," Jean said, her smile sadistic as she continued to dig. "I like that sound." She lifted her shoe and knelt down closer to the boy. It was then she noticed something in his left ear: an earbud, decorated with a skull on it. She had a new idea. "Here," she cooed. "Let me take that one out. I want you to hear your own screams all the more loudly."

As she removed the earbud, Justin heard a loud bang, then felt something a bit wet touch his face, right under his left eye. It was a drop of blood. He looked up to see Jean, now with a very narrow hole through the front of her head. Jean's right hand, which had been holding his left earbud, let go of his headphones, as that hand fell limp, then began to slow. In fact, her entire body glowed until it condensed into a ball of light that, upon fading, left floating in the air a lone human soul.

"There," Azusa said from within her weapon form. "You figured out how to aim."

"Quiet," Ayama ordered in between two of her deep breaths, struggling to calm herself after sprinting all this distance to get close to Jean's spot. "Just be the eyes, not the mouth."

Ayama looked forward to where she saw her classmate. "Justin!" she called. "How you hanging in there?"

"Poorly!" Justin, still lying on the sidewalk, called back. While still lying down, he replaced his earbuds and tugged down on his shirt. There was his MP3 player, duct taped on. He immediately increased the volume, drowning out much of whatever Ayama was saying to him. As she got closer, he hurried to his feet, trying to ignore the pain in the heel-shaped wedge in his left hand as he pressed it down to assist his ascent. Now that he was standing upright, he could successfully read Ayama's lips, catching only her last part:

"That sound good, buddy?"

Justin simply smile and nodded.

Amaya grinned. She could tell he had not listened to one word she just said-but whatever, the kid had his own problems. And she had her next task in front of her, one involving the softly glowing orb that was Jean Dark's soul. Amaya reached out and wrapped her finger around it, as she lowered Azusa off her shoulder, poking her muzzle at the soul.

"Here, have your dinner."

"Stop calling it that," Azusa said from her weapon, as she willed the soul towards her muzzle, where it grew so narrow as if it was sucked like a vacuum.

Having satiated her weapon, which she strapped back around her back, Amaya turned to her classmate. Justin definitely took his beating on this mission: he was holding his hand to his nose, which was bloody from whatever Jean had done to him. Amaya quickly considered that Justin may have broken it-so a hospital would be there next stop. His knees were scuffed, too, but that should heal more easily. He was clutching his left hand, so maybe that would be an injury for the hospital to check out. She studied his eyes: they were a bit red but not teary, and it looked like he was dealing with the pain as well as he could. No point worrying the kid, though-based on the pain he was probably feeling, best to say something to lift up his spirits.

"Great work, kid," she said to Justin. "Nice job distracting Jean by slicing her off at the shoulder!"

Justin pursed his lips and averted his eyes.

"Did I say something wrong?" Amaya asked.

Justin rubbed the back of his head and began to laugh nervously. "I was aiming for her head."

* * *

 _ **I have no idea who Azusa Yumi's meister was when she was in school-so I made up a character, Amaya Okami.**_


End file.
